


Untitled

by amaranthmantis



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 14:05:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3491123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaranthmantis/pseuds/amaranthmantis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The lives of The Handmaid and The Disciple, after they flee to Earth. Or, "What if things went really adorably well for Damara Megido after a very hard life?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled

Your name is DAMARA MEGIDO. You're a long way from home.

But... you're no longer alone.

The flat human audiovisual plaque blares soft blue light as the episode credits roll. You decide to watch another, even though you're not really paying attention to the show at this point; it's just there for background noise. It helps a little, on nights when you're thinking of home.

She stirs quietly on the big sofa behind you. Fell asleep about 30 minutes ago, into the fourth episode of the evening, the way she usually does. Without moving, standing up or even looking back, you fetch the blanket folded over the arm, spread it wide, and lower it over her, completely still and silent.

Her back will ache from sleeping on the sofa, come morning -- it's inevitable, at her age. Later, when she's slumbering restfully, you'll lift her to the bed, so softly and lightly that she'll wonder, for a moment, how she got there.

This is also inevitable.

When the rebellion broke out, you weren't quite an adult, and already you'd been on your own a long time. Your lusus saw to that, and for her cruelty you saw to her. Or tried to, anyway. You got your position across, left her blood-soaked, minus several limbs and both antennae, in the tatters of her own paper nest -- but her sting nearly killed you, and you still get bad asthma attacks all these years later.

You ran away, far to the West, until you found that nobody understood your dialect at all. Speak proper Imperial, people said. You understood them, but to you it was only the language of highblood ceremony -- slightly distant, ritualized and unfamiliar. Quite frankly, if people spoke the Imperial dialect in your vicintiy, things were about to get very, very bad. The people here, closer to the center of power, knew no other tongue, and had no patience for your "foreign lowblood vernacular." When you tried, they mocked your accent, or affected not to understand you at all. Humiliated and angry, you soon refused to give them the satisfaction. The least of peasants, you survived by being too fearsome to touch. All your neighbors got the idea quickly: Don't fuck with the scary rustblood kid in the forest.

Then you met someone remarkable. He welcomed and pitied you, liked and loved and ultimately hurt you. For sweeps, you were friends and more, though his other friends never seemed quite to trust or like you, however much they fawned over the idea of you. You pretended it didn't phase you, as long as he was around. Though he didn't speak your language, he understood a very little -- entertainment from your province was popular in his -- and he was willing to learn. The others settled for performing the same repetetive phrases for one another's amusement, but he actually wanted to understand you better.

His accent was terrible, and you delighted in telling him so.

When he grew flushed for someone else, you tried to act like you didn't notice. You gave him every opportunity to do right by you, and in the end he left you.

Seven sweeps old, you left for the deep woods and never looked back.

It was sweeps before the highbloods came for you. You knew nothing of the Signless or his rebellion, still less that the one you'd trusted was now following his example. It didn't matter. They were after anyone connected to him, and your independence was an affront to a threatened empire.

You fought, every time they came for you. The locals soon referred to you as the Handmaid of Death, after you placed their skulls out as a warning. Soon you were almost as wanted as the Summoner himself. The highbloods took pleasure in harassing you, every encounter making you a little more careless. Several times you were imprisoned and tortured -- first for information you couldn't provide, then for the novelty of tormenting a foreign lowblood who couldn't scream without wheezing and choking.

Somehow, you always broke free.

When you saw him again, all those sweeps later, and learned who he was and why he'd come, you fell silent so as not to give him the satisfaction. But you fought, alongside a growing, desperate crew. When Redglare's lusus was slain, and the rebellion fragmented tactically, you stole the ship in which he and you and a hundred others made their escape, to a strange single-mooned planet of hornless day-dwellers with no lusii and just one common blood color.

That's where you met her.

You isolated yourself during the journey, spoke to nobody. Not even him. After arriving at your new home, government had to be cobbled together, a treaty negotiated with alien hosts, and everyone past their final grubmoult in age had to come together to build a new society. You acted as if none of it involved you. You were still barely nine sweeps old, almost nobody understood your words. By this point, you were done trying to speak them at all. You hung around anyway, mainly because there was no other place to go. You didn't speak any of the countless human languages you've since learned exist on this planet, and wouldn't be able to live among them if you did.

You can't explain why you showed up to all the talking circles and diplomatic functions that comprised the first year on Earth.

(Later on, when you got the hang of listening and reading in the local tongue, you studied their time systems because it fascinated you. Clocks and calendars, ancient and modern, from all over the dizzyingly varied landmasses and their history. The human librarians were very kind.)

It wasn't because you cared. Nobody understood you -- or, nearly nobody. You couldn't bear the thought of him being your voice to the talking circles, to the council that eventually arose. You decided you wouldn't have one at all. Bitterness and rage had run their course. Now all you had left was apathy and distrust. Yet still, you showed up.

Perhaps you simply couldn't stand the thought of not being involved in shaping this new future. Whatever it was, you attended, keeping mostly to yourself but listening to every word said in your presence.

You're not sure what she saw in you at the time.

In fact, for the first several strange human earth weeks, you weren't sure she had actually noticed you at all. She was just... there, welcoming. Facilitating. Making sure stuff got done. An older oliveblood woman with long hair and a perpetual smile, she ran errands, handled logistics, reached out to the humans, and made sure in any function that the people assigned to a task were compatible with it and each other.

Not that you noticed at the time, but she's scary good at that.

One day she asked, warmly and politely, for your help with some small task. When you pretended not to hear her, you soon realized she couldn't hear anyone. She kept asking, until you finally caved in just because it was less awkward than any explicit refusal would be.

Like you, she had a history of consorting with future revolutionaries. Like you, she'd suffered loss, pain and hardship for it. Like you, her favored language was one almost nobody recognized.

Unlike you, it seemed that she was immune to distrust. For a while you almost hated her for it, because it was only marginally harder (and much less satisfying) to hate yourself. If she noticed the sickening churn of bitterness inside you, she gave no sign. She simply... urged you to be you involved, giving you space but keeping you company as well. So long as you allowed it. She never treated your aloofness as a problem to be solved. Secure in herself, she had all that she needed to be patient with you.

You had to take space from her more often than you wanted to, had to step back. It could be an awful lot to deal with sometimes, and yet when it worked it was the most natural thing in the world. Still, you had limits. Sometimes you disappeared for hours, other times for weeks.

When she persuaded the council to allocate money for a school, she made a place for you in it. When she ventured out into the human city (before ten years had passed, before the small New Alternia settlement had grown into a district) she frequently invited you along. To libraries, to schools, to sign language classes. It was the first time you allowed anyone to touch you since leaving Alternia -- she would gently help position your uncertain fingers when you were having trouble. She never tried to touch you without permission, and the first time you touched her, she beamed so radiantly that you forgot for a moment how much time and trust had gone into that moment.

To this day, you still prefer to touch her rather than the other way around. And often with your mind alone, at that -- though she deeply appreciates being caressed invisibly from across the room.

Before you knew it, far too much time had passed. Two generations of wigglers were hatched. Even you have helped to raise them, though it remains difficult. You especially regret no longer teaching art at the academy, but full-time contact with lots of people had proven to be too much for you. You're not as young as you once were, and all this belonging is still very overwhelming sometimes after what you've been through. You have no idea how she keeps going at her age. After so long and so much growing, you still spend more days at home than not, reading or cooking and watching a nearly constant stream of video.

You really love animation.

It was five years ago that the two of you got a place together. Sometimes it still baffles you that it's been so long. The two of you never worried about quadrants, never bothered to name the thing. You simply are.

Sometimes, it's too much. But right now, it's more than you could've hoped for.


End file.
